CptCookie's Blog - Jan to Mar 23 (2 followers)

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  Date range... Jan - Mar 23 Oct - Dec 22
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Hey there,

Another month has passed which means: it's time for another blog post from me.. I guess?
So what happened in January? Not much to be honest. I didn't manage to finish a single game during that month and I also played way less than I planned to. Somehow I was really burned out and couldn't enjoy gaming. I know: it's weird. But sometimes I feel like that. ?????

So that means Cult of the Lamb and Dome Keeper are still on the agenda for February. ??
Which isn't bad, I'm confident I can make some progress in both of those games and maybe finish them. We'll see.

Besides those there aren't any big plans gaming-wise.
I started Snake Pass and Ghosts'n'Goblins Resurrection. I only played like 30 minutes of each but both of those games seem to be demanding when it comes to skill, the good old "git gud, noob!". ??
Which I expected for G'n'G Resurrection, because the franchise is known for being hard (although as it turns out: it's almost Volgarr the Viking levels of hard... so really, really tough and unforgiving, at least that's my impression so far).
Snake Pass however surprised me. I expected some kind of casual platformer but so far it seems that the game wants you to really get to grips with the movement and play in specific ways to get all the coins and bubbles on every level. So yeah.. that's going to be a challenge, at least for me.
Guess I'll have to find out if I'll be able to complete either of those games, especially G'n'G concerns me in that regard.

I bought a couple of new games, like I do almost every month. Mainly stuff from my wishlist that went on sale like MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, Trailmakers, Headland, Sir Whoopass and a few others. Nothing major really. ??

I also bought WRC Generations and several of the older WRC games while they were on sale. Because as you might or might not know, the WRC license will be changing hands this year. Generations is the last WRC game from KT Racing / Nacon.

From now on Codemasters / EA will be producing the WRC titles which probably means the older games from KT Racing / Nacon will be removed from the steam store front. They will share the same fate as the older F1 games (pre F1 2020) since those also got removed when EA took over. I missed out on the F1 games, so this time around I was a bit more cautious and bought them before it's too late.

Am I excited about this change? No, not really. I think the KT Racing / Nacon games aren't as bad as their rep. Sure, they have flaws, quite a few really. But overall, physics- and driving-wise I believe they are solid. ?????
Codemasters on the other hand are inconsistent, imo. Dirt Rally 1.0 was really good and had solid handling. Dirt Rally 2.0, I don't like at all. The cars feel way too floaty and drifty, the game never gives you this feeling of "Oh, now the car stopped drifting and the tires are really digging into the surface of the road". To me, it just feels off. But hey.. that's probably highly subjective, it's not like I've ever driven a rally car irl or something. ??

EA is... EA, I guess. I didn't like what they did with F1 22, which is arguably one of the worst F1 games of recent years. Instead of improving the game in meaningful ways, they added silly features (F1 life, hypercars, copyrighted music) that no one really asked for and called it a day. That's at least what it feels like.

I don't know.. I think there is a big risk that the F1 and WRC games will become a lot more like FIFA, NBA and all of those other EA Sports franchises. So: very little evolution in between the yearly releases, even less than they had before EA took over.

Anyways, enough rambling:
Cult of the Lamb, Dome Keeper -> finish them.
Snake Pass, Ghosts'n'Goblins Resurrection -> let's see how far I'll get with those.
1 or 2 very small games -> maybe I can sneak those in somewhere, if my time schedule allows it.
That's pretty much my road map for February. ??

With that being said: I'll see you next time.??

Hey,

It's been a while since the last post. I successfully procrastinated writing another post until now. So it's about time to finally write another one.

What have I been up to these past 1 1/2 months, gaming-wise?
Oh, you know.. not much. Mostly pissing away my time. Especially December 2022 was kinda bad with plenty of days were I felt like "Meh, I don't want to do anything."

I gave My Summer Car another try since it has a lot achievements that net you lots of points. I also didn't play it in years, so I figured why not give it another try?
Long story short: Don't bother with that game. Seriously, just don't.
It's still buggy, arguably more tedious than ever before and still has the same flaws that plagued it 5, 7 or 9 years ago.
I did some research and found out that the game has been in development since (at least!) 2014. I remember that it was on Steam Greenlight at some point (anyone else remember that Greenlight was a thing?) and I might've even voted for it... but here we are: 2023, "My Summer Car" is still in early access.
I really don't want to rant too much about the game, I understand that it's one guy who works on it and that it's kind of a passion project.. but damn, it's just not a good game imo. Especially once you've assembled the Satsuma the game becomes very boring.

To remain somewhat sane I also played Bastion during December and tried to complete it. Bastion is still a good game, I enjoy the narration a lot although it's obvious that it was Super Giant's first major title. It's not on the same level as Hades, both gameplay- and story-wise. But hey.. Hades is a 11 out of 10 game, so Bastion is still at least an 8 out of 10 and well worth it.
Did I complete it? No.. I mostly have to do the arena achievements.. where you have to clear arenas while also having certain totems/modifiers activated. I simply didn't feel like grinding those, especially since the combat is a bit stiff and awkward at times. The controls aren't as fluid as they are in Hades... so yeah.. at some point I'll sit down and grind those cheevos for sure. But December wasn't the right point in time, I guess.

Besides those two games, I played a bit of Cyberpunk 2077 and I picked up Dome Keeper, Cult of the Lamb and Elden Ring during the christmas sale.

Cyberpunk 2077 really surprised me. I mean.. the setting and whole in-game world is right down my alley. I enjoy retrowave/retroelectro a lot (ever since that's been a huge thing in 2013/2014.. remember when Hotline Miami 1 came out?), I like retro futurism and of course all the neon lights and stuff. So Cyberpunk covers many of those bases, even though the story takes place in the near(ish) future.
It's also fun to think about truly autonomous AIs and transhumanism, what our lives would look like if we could somehow augment ourselves with technology instead of having to carry a smartphone everywhere.
But what surprised me was the optimization of the game. I use a somewhat aged system but I'm still able to run the game at 60 fps with some dips to 40 - 45 fps.
I also feel like Cyberpunk is one of the first game that I have played that does FSR right.
Since I play on an 1080p monitor I often run into the issue that FSR gives me more FPS (like it should, duh).. but at the same time the image becomes blurry and AA takes a hit as well.
With Cyberpunk I don't have any issues with FSR whatsoever.. maybe the image quality suffers a tiny bit. But it's certainly not as excessive as it is with most other games.
Overall, I feel like CD Project Red have worked hard to improve the game since the terrible launch.

Regarding Dome Keeper and Cult of the Lamb I can't say much about both titles at this point in time. At the moment I enjoy Dome Keeper more. It scratches that "just one more run"-itch very well while Cult of the Lamb started off strong but somehow gets less enjoyable the more I play it. Don't get me wrong: It's still a good game as far as I can tell. But it's definitely one of those games that start very strong but lose momentum the more you play them.

Elden Ring I purely picked up because it got multiple GOTY-awards (I think?). I have never finished a Souls-like game before. So trying to 100% that game will be an experience, I reckon. I mean.. I know what I'm in for, I'm just not sure if I can pull it off.

As far as goals for 2023 go:
My number one priority is to finally get my curator page on steam going. That's really something I want to do but as you can probably tell by now: persistency isn't my biggest strength, so that's gonna be a challenge by itself.
Besides that, I don't have it all planned out, things become a bit blurry.
Of course achievement hunting will always be on the menu, that's a given. I feel like that and the curator stuff pretty much go hand in hand.

The only other thing I can think off is sim racing. I always enjoyed racing games and in 2022 I gave iRacing a try.. which was so much fun, although pretty expensive at the same time. I think I would like to do that regularly again.. but not at the expense of the other stuff I mentioned. So I have to aim for some kind of delicate balance in that regard. But yeah.. the racing stuff is pretty much a topic for a whole blog post on it's own.

Well, I guess that's it for now.. this post is more than long enough, I guess.
To whoever made it this far (and although it sounds super corny): a (late) happy new year. May you stay healthy and reach your goals.. and thanks for reading my ramblings.
See you next time.